


Journey

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Series: Kings of Nowhere [14]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 14:50:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13549623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: Ryan is perhaps not the best choice for this quest, but times are desperate and there's little enough choice in the end.





	Journey

**Author's Note:**

> For miss-ingno who asked for wizard!Ryan and secret-dragon!Gavin and with banter and suchlike and gets this instead? IDK, okay. This is like an entire world in my head, so. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Ryan's up a tree in an attempt to reclaim the crest given to him years ago now that allows him passage places most people cannot go. 

Meg's laughing at him, wicked delight in her eyes as the damn raven flits to a higher branch and Ryan curses whatever gods felt their paths should cross.

“Get back here!”

She sets the crest down in the crook of a branch, hopping a little closer to get a better look at the bumbling wizard inching his way closer. Tilts her head just so, encouragement or a dare, it's all the same with her when she gets something into her head like this. 

“We don't have time for this,” Ryan says, hoping to appeal to her sense of duty. “Please.”

Meg ruffles her feathers, tilts her head the other way. For a moment Ryan thinks she's going to continue whatever game she's playing - 

“She's lovely.”

Ryan starts, nearly losing his hold on the branches he's precariously perched on and looks down to see a slim figure looking up at them.

Dressed oddly even for this region, smile on his face when he realizes Ryan's staring down at him.

“I haven't seen one like her in some time,” he says. “You must have come a long way to get here.”

Ryan isn't sure if the stranger realizes what she is, or simply thinks she's some rare species of raven, he doesn't know. 

Meg makes a noise, startled, and Ryan looks back in time to se her snatch up the crest before dipping through the branches to reach him. Drops it into his waiting hand before climbing up to her perch on his shoulder to peer down at the stranger below.

Fascinated, and that's worrying because she's horrible. The worst, really, with all her clever tricks and games.

“A bit,” Ryan admits, wary of strangers after a few incidents along the way. Bandits and highwaymen and other desperate souls. 

The stranger hums thoughtfully to himself, apparently seeing nothing at all unusual in holding a conversation with a man up a tree after a raven.

Meg shifts, restless and something else, and Ryan isn't expecting it at all when she nips at his ear. Sharp and painful and this time he does fall, Meg's laughter following him as he tumbles down, down, down.

Hears a pained grunt as he lands on something softer than the ground – some _one_ his mind informs him – and finds himself face-to-face with the stranger.

Eyes that don't seem to be any one color and a bemused expression on his face.

“Ah, hello, I suppose?”

========

Gavin is an enigma, strange man with odd thoughts.

“No!” Ryan sputters, staring at Gavin as he reaches down to help him up an embankment. “That's not – No! Why would you think something like that is possible?”

Gavin and his questions about the world and the way it fits together. The way Ryan's learned to tap into the magic around him, a living breathing thing, weave a thread of it into the fabric of a spell. Curious about it the way some are.

“You can't _force_ it,” Ryan says through gritted teeth, memories of such allegations against himself clear in his mind, feels things spiraling away from him, them, to someplace it wasn't meant to. Away from another of Gavin's ridiculous questions, to _this_. “There are consequences if you try.”

There are people, however, who don't care about said consequences. Who grab at what magic they can reach. Greedy and and cruel and never satisfied, twisting the world around them into something ugly and unrecognizable. Something _obscene_.

Gavin makes a noise in his throat, as though he's realized the shift in Ryan's mood, his own swinging around to match.

“But you can,” Gavin says, strange kind of insistence to it as though he's challenging Ryan to refute the truth. 

Ryan studies him, sees the anger to Gavin, old and bitter and wonders what could have put it there. 

“Yes,” Ryan admits, because to ignore it is a crime itself. “Others have.”

Gavin holds his gaze a moment longer, and nods to himself, hard planes of his face softening. Corner of his mouth twisting up slightly.

“Back to my original question then,” he says, voice light as he goes back to the ridiculous questions that led them down a dark path for a moment, history both clearly wish had never happened. “It's not impossible, is it?”

There's a light in Gavin's eyes Ryan knows well. Sees it so often in those around him, in his own reflection far too often – mischief.

Ryan throws his hands up and picks a likely direction and stalks off, ignoring Gavin's laughter behind him.

========

There is a forest at the edge of world where magic grows wild and creatures thought long vanished from the land are said to make their homes. 

The Undying Forest, some call it, legends and myths springing up around it over the years.

Over the mountain range that borders the kingdom Ryan's claimed as home for years and across an ocean. Through burning deserts and swampland to the rolling hills where they happened upon Gavin.

It's said a dragon's been seen flying in the skies above it in recent years. Creature out of legend, its kind hunted for sport by nobles, and highly valued for the magical properties of their scales, powdered bits of horn and bones. 

Potions and poisons long thought gone from the world, but then had come an assassin with a poisoned blade and Geoff cold and pale and _dying_.

What spells and potions he's learned to craft over the years doing little to help him, prolonging the inevitable and it had been Jeremy who'd mentioned the stories. Offered to go himself, but Jack had needed him there, watching over Geoff and the others and Ryan - 

No use in him staying there if there was nothing else he could do.

“And that's my story,” Ryan says, cold and miserable as the storm rages on outside the cave they've taken shelter in.

Meg shuffles on his shoulder, moves closer to press against his neck. He closes his eyes, thankful for her company on this useless quest.

Gavin's quiet on the other side of the fire, head turned towards the cave's entrance to watch the play of lightning.

“Dragon hunting,” he murmurs, that bitterness from before leaking into his voice.

Ryan looks down at his hands, scars and marks from the nature of his work, his craft. The things that have made him the sort of man he is.

“Of a kind,” he says.

No intent to kill the dragon if it exists, some small hope he can bargain for a vial of its blood, a handful of scales.

With what he doesn't know for certain. Brought along gold and gemstones hidden away in his pack, other things he could offer up that he didn't mention to Jack or the others. (Bits of a soul already marred, and who would be the wiser?)

Small enough price for what Geoff and the others have given him.

Meg makes an unhappy noise, too familiar with Ryan and the way his mind works. Pecks him, spot of pain to jar him out of such thoughts.

“There are stories that say dragons can be reasoned with, bargained with.”

Legends for the most part, but why not put what faith he has in them for this?

The fire sparks as Gavin pokes at it, banking the fire for the night. No reason to travel in this weather.

“Perhaps,” Gavin says, odd note to his voice. “But it's costly.”

Ryan laughs, no humor to it, as he answers, “Some things are worth the cost, wouldn't you say?”

========

Ryan's far from his spell books, that safe little dungeon where he hones his craft and brews potions and it's never been more evident.

For a moment he gives in to weakness, wishes for the dank hallways leading to the quiet space he claimed long ago as his own. Only a select few daring to venture down the stone stairs along dank passages to where the peculiar little man mutters to himself as he works, hands stained with ink and charcoal. 

For Jack's presence beside him. Calm and steadying when the man isn't being an annoying prick, taking a certain delight in stirring up trouble and seeing how it all pays out. Sweet smile on his face belying the mischief that lives in his heart, clever and patient.

“You could read these damn things,” he mutters, lines of the maps he has spread out before him beginning to blur before his eyes. “Find our way out of this mess.”

There's a thoughtful hum just a little ways away. Gavin sunning himself on some rocks in the clearing they've stopped in after going in circles for half the day.

“We should be heading west,” Gavin says, accent still odd to Ryan's ears even though he's the stranger in these lands. 

Clothes out of place and drawing odd looks from other travelers, townspeople when he passes through burgs and hamlets and bustling cities. Small and tired and dirty and desperate, because time grows ever shorter.

“The maps say _northeast_ ,” Ryan says, worn down and so very out of his element, but he knows this, at least. 

Or did, when he set out on this quest what seems a lifetime, two, ago. 

The maps he and Jack pored over for days. Geoff wasting away with each moment and the strain weighing heavy on them both, but there was no other way.

Chasing stories and legends and half-whispered rumors that have led him on this gods-be-damned fool's errand.

There's a huff, annoyed, and the sound irritates Ryan. Digs at the last scrap of patience he has left to him and he turns to face Gavin. 

This strange young man dressed in varying shades of green that allow him to blend into the woods around them with alarming ease. Strange eyes that catch the light in an odd way when he slants his head towards Ryan. Glitter at his throat from the gold chain he wears, weighed down by a pendant hidden under his clothes.

Decided since they were headed in the same direction there was no harm in them traveling together. Amused and delighted at the way Meg's taken to sitting on his shoulder from time to time. Plucking at his hair and playing some kind of game Ryan can't understand, rules known only to the two of them, their laughter bright and lively.

There's a kernel of something in his chest, an ache when he watches them. Sees the way the raven familiar keeps coming back to Gavin as though he's a beacon she's drawn to time and again, inevitable.

Reminds himself that Meg has never been _his_. 

She came to him in a storm, small and battered and tossed about by the winds, and stayed by his side once she was healed. Never his familiar, but rather friend and companion or her own free will, and circumstances change, don't they.

“You're welcome to go your own way,” he says, years of court manners ingrained so deeply it's as though he cannot escape them even when he wants to. “I don't recall - “

“You're lost,” Gavin says, like it's a simple enough thing. Gestures at Ryan's maps, head tilted slightly. “And whatever you're looking for won't be on them.”

Ryan's hands clench by his side, but he can't deny it. Not after their fruitless wandering earlier. 

“West,” Gavin says, soft smile on his face as he moves up beside Ryan and begins rolling up the maps, graces Ryan with a smile. “Trust me.”

Ryan stares at him, because there's little enough choice in the matter when he's in a strange land looking for something that can't possibly exist in this day and age. Holding tight to the only hope he has left, borrowed from Jack and fading more with each day.

In the distance he can hear Meg calling. Sees her winging her way back to them from another scouting flight, true as any arrow loosed from a bow with the sun at her back.

“West,” Gavin says again, softer, and Ryan relents.

“If you're certain,” he says, something mulish to it because there's some stubborn spark to him still. Reluctant to hand Gavin this victory so easily.

Gavin's smile gives way to laughter as Meg lands lightly on his shoulder as though she's done so all her life. 

“I am,” he says, and leaves it at that.

========

There are a series of caves that lead through the mountains. Small cramped tunnels and pathways and treacherous footing. Dripping water from snow-melt that's worn paths through stone and rock over the years, lichen that glow with a light all their own.

Gavin's quiet here, shoulders drawn up as though the weight of the mountain above them is pressing down on him, immense and overwhelming.

Ryan casts about for something to distract him, pull Gavin out of his mind – and the ground shifts under his feet suddenly. Panic flares through him as he finds himself falling, scrabbling for purchase as Meg takes flight, calling to Gavin head of them.

Gavin whirls, eyes wide as he runs towards Ryan, arm outstretched, but he's too far away.

“Please,” Ryan yells, quest unfulfilled but perhaps there is something Gavin can do.

He sees it land somewhere Gavin as gravity wins out and he falls into the endless dark of the chasm below.

A falling stone slams against his head and the last thing he hears before unconsciousness claims him is a bellow somewhere high above him, wild and inhuman.

========

Consciousness comes in bits and pieces. Moments of lucidity quickly lost to the thundering pain in his head and the pain in his body.

Voices he cannot I quite identify, a woman's sweet and full of worry and somehow familiar. Another voice and an accent he still cannot place, doesn't recognize the way it wraps around words, changes the shape of them. No language or dialect he's ever heard.

Cool hands on his face, sweep of dark hair either side of his vision and dark eyes he _knows_ down to his soul. 

“Meg?”

She smiles down at him, voice soft, worried, “Shh, go back to sleep. You're hurt.”

Ryan reaches for her, frowns at the blood-stained bandages on his arms. Opens his mouth to speak, but she curls over him, forehead pressed to his and he feels unconsciousness pulling him back down.

“Wait, no - “

“Sleep,” Meg murmurs, and he does.

========

The sound of scales scraping across stone, displaced air and a great looming shape above him. Lines of the creature he's been searching for, head canted to the side to see him better.

Meg nowhere to be found, and it takes Ryan a moment to realize he's awake.

“Please,” Ryan says, struggling to sit up, reaching for the pack he no longer has. Hands tapping his chest, quick-beating heart and desperate hope. “Whatever is in my power to give you, I will.”

The dragon rumbles, lowering its head so Ryan no longer has to crane his neck to meet its eyes.

No one color, and something about it tugs at him, quiet and insistent and easily ignored in the face of more important matters.

Gleaming scales and fangs easily as long as his forearm when its lips peel back, hot gust of its breath washing over him before it turns and vanishes in the darkness with barely a sound to mark its passing.

He tries to follow it, but he's tired, weak, and sleep finds him soon enough.

========

The final time he wakes, he's no longer in the caves.

“Ryan?”

Jeremy's voice, small and hopeful. A moment later his face comes into view, tired and haggard , but there's a smile on his face.

“What - “

Jeremy laughs, hand darting out to pat Ryan's shoulder, quick reassuring squeeze. “I have to get Jack, he told me to the moment you woke up,” he says, apology and explanation in one as he disappears, leaving Ryan staring at the regrettably familiar ceiling of the infirmary.

Too many spells gone wrong, potions that weren't properly made or some other incident and Jack's long-suffering sigh. Michael's irritated grumbling. 

He doesn't understand how he could be here, now, and for a moment thinks he's dreaming still. Lost somewhere between consciousnesses the waking world, buried under stone and rock and miles from home.

Tries to sit up, to see -

“You're an idiot.”

Ryan blinks, and slowly turns his head to see Michael in the open doorway and a scowl on his face.

“Michael?

Michael pushes off the door-frame and makes his way to Ryan's bedside, familiar anger in his movements as he glares down at Ryan.

“You're lucky you're alive, you idiot,” Michael says, something helpless in his eyes before he looks away. 

Fear grips Ryan's heart because he remembers the caves, that treacherous span of rock they'd used to cross the chasm. Remembers falling and bits and pieces of everything after - 

He'd _failed_.

“Is Geoff - “

“Alive,” Michael says, shoulders slumping as he pulls the chair Jeremy had used earlier close. “Thanks to you, and your stupidity.”

Michael reaches out to Ryan, touch careful as he taps his knuckles against Ryan's forehead. Just enough to sting, a chastisement.

“Bring one of us with you next time,” he says, voice low and rough with emotion, the things he can't quite say even now. “Don't leave in the middle of the night with just a note left behind for us to find.”

Ryan opens his mouth, intending to tell Michael he hadn't been alone. That Meg had been with him, and the words dry up at the glare Michael sends his way. Pitfall of forming a friendship of sorts with a man who learns the way your mind works.

“Next time,” Ryan agrees, and smiles at the look Michael gives him. Far too knowing and resigned to dealing with the failings of the people he's come to call friend. (Family.)

========

Geoff is recovering, sleeps for most of the day but there's color in his cheeks and his breathing is easier. No longer has that concerning rattle to it. 

Better still is the way Jack looks, no heavy weight pressing down on his shoulders or lines on his face aging him well before his time. The note of humor to his voice when he catches Ryan hovering by Geoff's bedside instead of laying in his own, asking him if he's lost his way. 

Jeremy and Michael stepping forward to escort him back to the nearby bed, and settle down in chairs set aside for visitors. 

After a moment, Jack follows, and Ryan learns that Jeremy and Michael had found him outside the gates, alerted by a raven's call. Had bundled him off to the infirmary and Jack's care, and Jeremy had been the one to find the small glass vial Ryan had brought with him, full of dragon's blood and the small pouch with glittering scales he'd left to find.

“I didn't make it to the forest,” Ryan says, staring at one of the scales. Shades of green that would blend into the woods perfectly. “There was a cave - “

========

Geoff recovers, and things return to normal - 

Or would, if Ryan didn't feel as though something is not quite right.

There is some part of him reluctant to go back down to his quiet little rooms, far below ground where only a few ever go. 

Some part that takes to wandering the grounds, follows deer paths through the woods. Always listening for a familiar sound he hasn't heard in months. The call of a raven-familiar, friend who was by his side for so long. 

He dreams of green things, and eyes not any one color. Of long hair and dark eyes. Whispers of a place that shouldn't exist, and somehow does, at the edge of the world.

One day he spies something bright and glittering in the crook of a tree branch. Feels something like destiny falling into place when he climbs up to it and finds a pendant on a glittering chain of gold. 

It's warm and welcoming in his hand, some kind of gemstone that's no one color have been set as its eyes.

There's the cry of a raven, and when he looks sees one watching him from a branch high, high above before it takes flight, true as any arrow loosed from a bow.

========

“You should go,” Michael says that night, the others talking and laughing and sharing stories that grow bigger in the telling as alcohol flows. 

Ryan starts, looking up from his wandering thoughts to see Michael watching him, downturn to his mouth. 

“You think we haven't noticed?” he asks, turning his flagon round and round in his hands. Laughs, this little breath of sound. “This place isn't a prison, Ryan.”

He looks up then, crooked smile on his face and Ryan is struck again at just how young he is. Boyish, still, even though he's far wiser than he thinks.

“Go,” he says again, immeasurably fond, “before Geoff makes it an order.”

========

Ryan leaves in the dark of night, a nod to the way he came upon this place that was home for so many years. Leaves a note behind, small smile and quiet laugh imagining the look on Michael's face when the others find it.

He strikes out on the same path he took months ago with Meg perched on his shoulder.

This time it's far more quiet, no familiar chattering in his hear and playing her clever tricks and games. Just Ryan and a path that leads forward.


End file.
